Leadership Practices and Employee Ambassadorship: The Mediating Role of Basic Needs

In today’s competitive labor market, attracting and retaining talent is challenging, especially for public organizations facing aging workforces and declining interest in public service careers. To address this, organizations implement public employer branding strategies to attract and retain talent. Employees play a crucial role in promoting the organization’s employer brand, making it essential for public employers to encourage employees to display ambassadorship. Leadership practices can create an environment that fosters employee contributions to organizational success. This study, employing self-determination theory, explores how supervisors satisfying employees’ basic needs could foster ambassadorship. Surveys administered in a Belgian local government ( N employees = 228; N supervisors = 41) revealed that social support indirectly related to ambassadorship via relatedness need satisfaction. Exploratory analyses showed some support for the moderating role of supervisor ambassadorship modeling in this relationship. Overall, social support emerges as a crucial leadership practice for fostering ambassadorship, explaining leadership’s role in employer branding within the public sector.